n
the beginning was the scroll, but then someone had a bright idea and
lo,
there was brought forth the book, and people read books, and saw that
they
were a lot easier to read than scrolls.

Some
Other Nice Things You Could Buy For About the Same Price As a BookGem:

half of a hardback booka big one might actually stay open all by
itself

a cheap pair of reading glassesat least your eyes won't get so tired

1/5 of a visit to the chiropractor

a big bottle of ibuprofen works great on aching wrists and a stiff
neck

13 common bricksanother object that can be used to hold a book
open

a 3/8" thick piece of plate glass more transparent than a brick but don't let it
slide
off the book and hit you in the foot

a paperback book

- might we suggest:

Little Things Can MakeAll the Difference
by Vishnu P. I. Dahliwan

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

and Its Prevention

by Sharon M. Geronthan

Avoiding Stress

by Dr. Daniel Werenstein

Simple Solutions To

Age Old Problems

by Robert L. McMuffry Ph.D.

Why Didn't They

Think of This Before?

by Louise V. Trobeck

BookGem®

The World's Best Little Book HolderTM

Later, about the eighth century
A.D., paper
and the wood block printing press were developed in China. A few
hundred
years after that a clever guy named Gutenberg invented moveable metal
type,
and things really started to take off. Books could be printed by the
oxcart
load.

Of course this was still the
Middle Ages,
and reading was not yet a widespread phenomenon. So, at this point,
there
was still very little demand for a good pocket book holder. In fact,
pockets
were not yet a widespread phenomenon either.

But soon a couple of more
centuries had
whizzed by, and before you knew it literacy was starting to catch up
with
milking cows and beating plowshares into swords on the list of
desirable
skills.

More widespread books helped to
bring about
neat things like the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and democracy
and
personal hygiene.

However,
for one reason or another, there still wasn't much action in the pocket
book holder department.

Considering that pockets finally
appeared only
in the late 1500's (no kidding), it shouldn't be surprising that
mass-produced
injection-molded plastics hadn't even been imagined yet, much less
invented.
Moreover, books in the old days tended to stay open all by themselves!
Up until the last hundred and fifty years or so, books remained luxury
items of the upper classes, well made, bound in fine leather, even
embossed
in gold leaf. One advantage of these nicely bound volumes was that they
had nice flexible spines which allowed the pages to remain open.
Scholarly
people who pored over their books for hours sometimes propped their
open
books up on other books or inclined boards to make them a little easier
to read.

Thomas Jefferson was one such
intellectual
and wealthy lover of books. This voracious reader and admitted sufferer
of "Bibliomanie" went so far as to invent a sort of "lazy susan"
spinning book stand, so he could refer to four books at a time, each
one
inclined to the ideal viewing angle. You can still find related
"inclined
board" devices for sale today if you keep your eyes open, primitive
though
they are. (Sorry, Tom.)

But
then something revolutionary happened -
the paperback book.

Yes, the paperback - easy to
manufacture,
cheap, and portable, this development made books affordable to many
more
people.

Unfortunately, the paperback
also happened
to be a kind of book that simply would not stay open by itself. The
stiff
glued spine forced the reader to constantly hold the book open,
generally
using both hands.

One possible reason TV
has
eclipsed the book in
popularity
-

a TV willstand up
all by itself!

Imagine for a moment that you had
to hold your
television up the whole time you were watching it. (The average
American
might actually read a little more if that were the case - at least
books
are lighter than tv's.) One might wonder also if the laptop computer
would
have become quite so popular if the screen snapped shut unless you held
it up constantly with both hands.

And yet, ever since the advent
of the little
paperback book, millions of people have had little choice but to read
for
hours and hours at a stretch, the whole time having to hold the book up
with both hands.

Law
enforcement agents employ devices that are very similar in many
respects
to a paperback book.

But the problem doesn't lie
exclusively
with paperbacks. Most of todays small to medium sized hardback books,
especially
when new, won't stay open either, and even if the reader folds the
pages
all the way over and creases the spine and manages to get the pages to
stay open, the book either sits flat on a table or has to be held up
where
it can be seen.

To this day, only the finest
large hardback
books, like dictionaries and textbooks, will stay open to the page
desired.

In sum, after five or ten
thousand years
of reading, and about fifteen hundred years of books, the market for a
good inexpensive folding pocket book holder has finally matured.

Let's Do A Little
Math

- The average student who
completes 12
years of schooling and another four years of college, reading an
average
of three hours a day for eight months of the year, will have spent a
total
of just over 11,500 hours reading.

- If someone reads for only
half an hour
a day throughout an average adult life span, this would be another
10,000
hours or so.